Cry, the Beloved Country
by Alan Paton · first published 1940
42% recommend58% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Novel about pre-apartheid South Africa and the social forces leading to it, valued for its compassion and for changing how readers see the world; often called powerful and rewarding even when it is hard going at first.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
This book is the most famous and important novel in South Africa's history, and an immediate worldwide bestseller when it was published in 1948. Alan Paton's impassioned novel about a black man's country under white man's law is a work of searing beauty. The eminent literary critic Lewis Gannett wrote, " We have had many novels from statesmen and reformers, almost all bad; many novels from poets, almost all thin. In Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country the statesman, the poet and the novelist meet in a unique harmony." Cry, the Beloved Country is the deeply moving story of the Zulu past
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If you want to learn more about what South Africa was like for people of different races before Apartheid, and the steps that lead to Apartheid, you should read the excellent book 'Cry the Beloved Country.' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cry,_the_Beloved_Country, http://www.amazon.com/Cry-Beloved-Country-Alan-Paton/dp/0743...) The history of South Africa is unique, and you will learn something. These events…
on “The Day Mandela Was Arrested, With A Little Help From the CIA” ↗Cry The Beloved Country by Alan Paton. Whenever I feel short of compassion, this books helps me gain some senses and completely change the way I look at the world - literally everytime.
on “Ask HN: Which book have you re-read recently?” ↗I will not say it's true for every novel. The Outsiders was a book that bored me in school, and I still find it boring. Cry, the Beloved Country on the other hand was completely over my head in high school, but it is one of my favorites now.
on “Christopher Nolan: The power of people and why 2001 should be preschool viewing” ↗…copying the narrative quality of Doctor Manhatten from the Watchmen novel, not realising that it worked for him because he was a being who lived outside of time, but it just makes them look stupid. [1] "Cry, The Beloved Country", which is one of the more powerful books I've read in my life thus far, next to 1984 and similar. People who virtue signal (you know who you are) should read this; the struggle was real, human grief…
on “Unconditional Love” ↗For me it's either "Cry, the Beloved Country" or "Slaughterhouse-Five". EDIT: Oh wait, or maybe it's "The End of the Affair", or "Je l'aimais".
on “Ask HN: What's the "best" book you've ever read?” ↗…"Classic" literature often has a very high comprehension level and often relies on a shared history/culture for many things. Translation doesn't always really work. In English, for example, let's take "Cry, the Beloved Country" by Alan Paton. I don't know how to describe it, but that novel has a "rhythm". How on Earth would you translate that to Japanese and not lose that? Part of the reason I wanted to learn Japanese is…
on “Kobayashi’s Maid Dragon Translation Notes” ↗…good read. It is not an exaggeration to say that several generations of editors were influenced by him (an example that would be almost impossible to emulate today). The 'new' authors mentioned--Paton (Cry the Beloved Country) and Jones (From Here to Eternity)--ended up being the last books he edited (spoilers: he dies at the end).
on “On Max Perkins, One of America's Greatest Editors” ↗As a South African, Cry The Beloved Country resonates deeply with me. Thank you, sir, for all that you gave. Read the book by Alan Paton, and you may go down a rabbithole. They did the story justice with that movie.
on “James Earl Jones has died” ↗Cry The Beloved Country, based on the book by beloved South African writer Alan Paton. They did justice to the book. He was spectacular in his portrayal. As a South African it resonates deeply with me and is more relevant…
on “James Earl Jones has died” ↗…talk in correct grammar. If the entire book is a narration, then the entire book will be filled with grammar as it is spoken, not grammar as it is written. A few exceptions come to mind (Alan Paton's "Cry The Beloved Country" and some other stories I recall reading that used broken grammar as part of the plot, story or for effect), but on the whole most books have had grammar that follows the rules.
on “How bad are childhood literacy rates?” ↗…for whatever reason, of "themed" curricula. For example, in my 9th grade English class, we read "Native Son" by Richard Wright (black American), "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe (black Nigerian), "Cry, the Beloved Country" by Alan Paton (black South African), "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad (the only white person on this list, and, inarguably, the only High Literature as well), and something or other by Maya Angelou…
on “The Pixar Theory” ↗…select books because of the cultural or racial themes they contain (James Baldwin, Isaac Bashevis Singer...), but the nationality or the "race" of the author is a poor discriminant for this. When I read "Cry, the beloved country", I wondered the author was a Black South-African, but I didn't care enough to search for an answer to my own question. And maybe Jorge-Luis Borges in in the "Latinx" category and Ohran Pamuk is a "Middle-Easterner",…
on “The Goodreads “Classics”: A Computational Study” ↗…are ones I ought to have read in high school some 15 years ago, but just never did because I didn't enjoy reading and never made the effort: The Great Gatsby, As I Lay Dying, and am currently reading Cry, The Beloved Country
on “Ask HN: Best books you've read in 2015” ↗The very witty title of the article is a reference to "Cry, the Beloved Country"[0], a famous South African novel from 1948 dealing with the racist social structures leading to Apartheid. (It deals with other things too). It's a great book and I would recommend it to anyone, even…
on “Dry, the beloved country” ↗I wonder if there are any lessons to be learned from other times and places. "Cry, the Beloved Country" seems to spring to mind ...
on “The Blindness of Social Wealth” ↗